Casual Fridays
dmunger | December 26, 2008[Originally posted in December, 2006]
So it's December 22, and you are one of the few people who hasn't already bagged out of work to get ready for the holidays. You've been absolutely deluged -- swamped with work -- the entire month of December. You've hardly had time to think about Christmas, let alone shop. But now, with the holiday just a couple short days away, you're faced with the shocking truth. You'll be attending three different Christmas parties (or whatever alternative you prefer). Gifts will be exchanged. What's an overworked procrastinator to do? Would gift certificates be…
dmunger | December 19, 2008Last week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by my (incorrect) observation that the latest beta version of Firefox always displays tabs. (Actually, while it defaults to that setting, it's possible to disable it.)
When I pointed this out on Twitter, the reaction was one of astonished disbelief that I might ever not want to be viewing multiple tabs. Am I the only person left who doesn't always use tabs? And who uses the most tabs? We asked readers how many tabs they currently had open, as well as several other questions about their internet habits and opinions.
As it turns out, I'm in a…
dmunger | December 12, 2008A few days ago after downloading the latest beta version of the FireFox web browser, I posted what I thought was an innocuous complaint on Twitter: The software assumes you will always have multiple web pages open. Even if you're only reading one web page, the browser puts it in a tab, thus taking up valuable screen real estate.
Immediately I started getting replies: "how can you work with just one tab? I've got 37 open now!" "Does anyone not use tabs anymore?" Actually, it's not that I never use tabs, it's that sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But perhaps I'm the only one.
But still, it…
dmunger | December 5, 2008The last place I lived before small-town Davidson, North Carolina, was New York City. One thing that seemed extremely different to me when I moved from New York to Davidson was the behavior of pedestrians and drivers. In New York, drivers honk at you at a stoplight to remind you that the light's going to turn green in five seconds, so you'd better get moving. In Davidson, it's rude to honk for any reason other than to say "hello."
Pedestrians, too, behaved differently. In New York, they seemed to openly defy cars, almost daring them to run them down. There's a New York look that seems to say…
dmunger | November 28, 2008Greta walks a mile to work every day. I work at home, so I don't walk around town much. I'm much more likely to be driving down the street where we live than walking on it.
Does this affect our attitude towards pedestrians when we drive? Greta and I have also both noticed that there are certain situations where drivers seem more likely to stop for pedestrians than others. Is it a universal rule? Or are our own observations biased by our personal experience?
This week's study may give us a way to find out. I've taken several photos of a pedestrian at/approaching a crosswalk. Your job is to…
dmunger | November 21, 2008Last week we wondered how having kids affects our own childhood memories. In many ways, our kids remind us of our own childhood, allowing us to relive our favorite memories. But kids also distract us by being so adorable (or not so adorable), and with new memories that might become more prominent than the old ones.
My own experience suggests that kids do remind me of my own childhood. Now that Jim and Nora are teenagers I find myself thinking about my own experience in high school -- sometimes about memories I hadn't considered for decades. But maybe that's an illusion. What I would have…
dmunger | November 14, 2008This morning I was having a conversation with Nora about her AP European history class, and it got me thinking about my own experience taking the same class about 25 years ago (yes, kids, they did have AP classes back then). Mainly it reminded me that I can't remember much at all about the class. I remember lots of facts about European history, but I can't track any of them specifically to that class. But it also made me wonder if I would have thought about that class at all if it hadn't been for Nora taking the class now.
On the other hand, I seem to remember my other AP classes from high…
dmunger | November 7, 2008Last week we asked our readers to predict the result of the election. How did they do?
Out of the 474 people who guessed the results of this year's presidential election, only six got the electoral vote right - 365 votes for Obama (assuming Missouri goes for McCain and Omaha goes for Obama). None of these respondents was accurate on the popular vote, but one anonymous respondent got close, guessing that McCain would get 47 percent (the actual figure was 46.3 percent). Only one person who guessed 365 left his name, so let's give Wayland credit as the unofficial "winner" of our prediction…
dmunger | October 31, 2008With the U.S. presidential election just a few days away, many of us are in a frenzy to get information about the polls and who might be the winner. And everyone has an opinion about who'll win. Today, you can test yourself against other CogDaily readers and see who's the best.
But we also want to know something else: Does a person's interest and involvement in the race affect their predictions? Will Obama supporters predict a wider margin of victory for their candidate?
And does being well-informed help? A relatively new phenomenon this year is poll aggregation websites, which collect the…
dmunger | October 24, 2008Aren't grandparents adorable? They're sweet and kind, they've been married for decades, and they've got wonderful archaic 1920s names like Edward and Edwina. Last week, based on the anecdotal evidence of my own grandparents and a couple from an NPR report, we speculated that couples from that older generation were more likely to have similar names than couples from the current generation.
It seems plausible, but is it really true? We invited readers to give us the names of their own grandparents, as well as their current significant others, and they responded with over 3,000 names. Then we…
dmunger | October 17, 2008My grandfather's name was Vern, and he married a woman named Verna. They were together for more than 30 years until she died. Then he married Elvira. That's them (and great-granddaughter Nora) off to the right. They were together another 20 years. Yesterday we profiled a couple named Ben and Bernice.
Is it a coincidence that these happily-married couples each had similar names? Are people more likely to marry others with first names similar to their own? If so, was this phenomenon something that was more common decades ago, or does it still happen today?
We just might be able to find out. In…
dmunger | October 10, 2008Last week we asked our readers about an illusion (created by Nobuyuki Kayahara) that's been circulated very widely recently:
While the illusion can't actually determine whether you're "right-brained" or "left-brained," we were curious about what actually affects people's perception of the illusion. Over 1,600 readers took our online survey about the illusion. What's interesting about the illusion is that it's ambiguous -- it can appear to be spinning both clockwise and counter-clockwise. Here's how our readers saw it:
So roughly two-thirds of viewers initially saw it spinning clockwise…
dmunger | October 3, 2008You've probably seen the "spinning woman" illusion as it circulated around the internet, complete with bogus claims that it can somehow be used to determine whether you're "right-brained" or "left-brained" (themselves concepts of amorphous meaning and validity).
But nonetheless it's an interesting illusion, and vision scientist Michael Bach (who has a great illusions page) suggested a Casual Fridays study based on the illusion. Some people see it spinning in one direction, some people see it spinning in reverse, and some can see it both ways. Do the people who can see the illusion have…
dmunger | September 26, 2008Last week we sought to uncover the truth behind the stereotype: Are Prius owners really just like Mac owners? In a non-scientific fashion, we quizzed our readers about several of the most common stereotypes that seem to follow these two trendy groups: They're arrogant, they think they're better informed than the rest of us, not to mention smarter, more attractive, and more concerned about the environment. They're Obama-supporting, latte-drinking, iPhone-toting snobs who always favor style over substance. Or are they?
Over 1,600 readers responded to our survey -- the most responses to a Casual…
dmunger | September 19, 2008A few days ago I noticed a comment on an online forum: "Prius owners are just like Mac owners." As a Mac owner and Prius owner, I felt that this comment needlessly stereotyped me. Were they implying that there was something wrong with me? That I was superficial? That I thought I was better than other people? On the other hand, as a Mac owner and a Prius owner, wasn't I confirming the stereotype?
Perhaps there is something to this stereotype, and Casual Friday may be just the time to find out. I've created a brief survey that asks you a few questions about your car, your computer, and your…
dmunger | September 12, 2008Last week we asked readers how much sleep they lost staying up to watch the political coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions, and how that compared to the sleep they lost a few weeks earlier watching the coverage of the Beijing Olympics.
Do people stay up later to watch politics, or sports? Or are sports fans less likely to watch politics, and vice versa?
First off, let's take a look at how much sleep was lost overall.
The Olympics were clearly a much bigger diversion than politics, with an average of an hour lost sleep per night for those who watched during the first week.…
dmunger | September 5, 2008I've been dragging for the last few days -- I just can't seem to resist watching the latest speeches from the Republican National Convention. I was similarly distracted by the Democratic Convention last week. It's affected my sleep habits: I got 1 to 2 hours less sleep than normal each night I stayed up to watch the politicians pontificate.
Greta, on the other hand, is content to watch the wrap-up coverage on the news the next morning while she works out on the treadmill. But even Greta couldn't resist the temptation of another recent event: the Olympic Games in Beijing. For the first week of…
dmunger | June 27, 2008This is just a brief note to let our loyal Casual Friday readers know that we'll be going on a break for the summer. We should be able to maintain a semi-reasonable pace with the regular Cognitive Daily posts, but with all of our travel, it generally becomes a logistical nightmare to keep up with Casual Fridays over the summer. See you in August!
In the meantime, you might want to use the comments section of this post to suggest Casual Friday topics you'd like to see in the Fall.
dmunger | June 21, 2008One of the things that motivated Nora and me to conduct the Casual Friday nuts study was our intense ambivalence toward the Brazil nut. It's so much bigger than the other nuts that it tends to dominate any mixture, even when present in small quantities. And, to our palate, it just doesn't taste good. It seems to be there only to waste space. As Jonah Lehrer put it in his comment on our original survey, "I've long believed that nobody actually likes Brazil nuts."
Indeed, it was the lowest-rated nut of any nut in our survey, as you can see in this graph of the ratings:
With an average rating…
dmunger | June 20, 2008Last week we asked our readers what their favorite types of mixed nuts were. Does the mixture that comes in the can actually approximate real-world preferences, or are the nut-packagers just giving us the cheapest nuts, with no allowances for our actual likes and dislikes?
We received over 600 responses. Readers rated seven types of nuts typically found in jars of mixed nuts on a scale 0 (don't like at all) to 5 (like very much). This morning I bought two cans of nuts from the grocery store and Nora carefully sorted, counted, and measured the contents of each can. Here are the contents of the…